Blogs

You’ve got it. Microsoft finally resolved your extensibility request and that enum, which was preventing you from removing all your overlays, is now extensible. You’re bursting with enthusiasm. Plus extending an enum is so easy. Your Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (D365FO) solution will be in the extensions only world in a minute. I can imagine a broad smile on your face. I apologise for breaking that magical moment. But I must bring you back to reality and say that if you have a database which is already using the overlayered enum values, there are some precautions you will have to take to ensure you don’t end up with corrupted data after the data upgrade. ...

In AX 2012 you had the ability to use Active Directory groups to help manage security within the application.
The basic setup behind this was that you would:
Create an AD group and put in the AX users you wanted to be controlled by that group
Create the AD group within AX, that group would basically act as a user within the application
Then create the users of that group as users within the application but assign them no security other than the System User role
Configure the security for your AD group within AX, now anyone assigned to that group would automatically get assigned the roles assigned to that group
Here is a great overview of the ...

With the push in D365FO for automating everything from deployment to servicing to testing one of the questions I’ve heard numerous times is how do you perform/is it possible to perform automated role access testing? This comes into play for a number of reasons:
With the quick releases of Microsoft D365FO I need a way to quickly ensure that my custom roles have the correct access even after updates
I want to validate that the combination of roles have access to a specific table or field that allows a user to perform an action
I want to validate that specific roles have access to custom objects
I want to validate that the table permission framework is ...

In the past, I’ve written about the Table Permission Framework functionality within D365FO but recently I’ve had numerous examples of this causing D365FO users issues when setting up security. Because of this, I wanted to write about it again to explain how the feature works, how to troubleshoot security errors caused by the TPF, and how to remediate it.
Table Permission Framework (TPF) Overview
As a recap TPF is used to provide an extra layer of security to your high business impact data (credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc). It is an extra check that the security framework does that requires that the user has been granted explicit ...

One thing I’ve been asked about numerous times and has caused confusion while using the user interface to set up security is some interesting behavior regarding objects showing up in the ‘Unpublished Objects’ area when no changes are made by the user.
The Scenario
A typical scenario is as follows:
User goes to System Administration -> Security Configuration -> Privileges (and notices there is no objects within Unpublished Objects)
Goes to a specific privilege -> Opens an object type -> Add a reference
User makes no change and clicks ‘Cancel’
User notices there are now objects within Unpublished Objects and wonders (correctly) what has ...

In numerous other posts, I talk about the effect of where you create D365FO security (AOT vs user interface) has on how it is stored. In other posts, I talk about creating an application to help move your security created in the user interface to your AOT. I thought it might be a good idea to bring these ideas to together and summarize this topic and show what security management best practice looks like in D365FO.
How is security data actually stored
If you create/modify a role, duty, or privilege in a Visual Studio project, the security data is stored in XML format within the project folder under the AosService -> PackagesLocalDirectory folder and ...

We were an early adopter of D365 and for most of the time since going live I’ve been a vocal critic of the reporting capabilities of the application. Microsoft initially pointed us to OData using Power BI or Excel. This has some limitations, most notably you can only retrieve data from a single legal entity. Microsoft will next point you to a BYOD database solution. When I initially looked at this as a solution, I continued to be frustrated primarily because the available data entities were still falling short of my needs. This has improved over the past 6-9 months, and I am now able to use BYOD to get some answers. This post is articulate what I’ve learned. ...

Before the introduction of Dynamics 365, the earlier versions of Dynamics AX consisted of an Application Integration Framework that enabled seamless integration of AX with other applications. The feature – that allowed transfer of data in a SOAP format between applications – has since been deprecated from D365 Finance and Operations (D365FO). Instead, a new type of integration has been introduced in the form of OData Services. OData or Open Data is a standard protocol based on the Representational State Transfer (REST) for creating, reading, updating, deleting, and consuming data. By applying web technologies such as HTTP and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), ...

Multithreading is a feature that allows simultaneous execution of any two or more processes or threads by maxing out the CPU. If you try to carry out an extensive task without threading, it will take a long time and can cause the screen to go into a non-responsive state. Although the batch job functionality allows you to run the process in the background, it tends to have some limitations. For example, you cannot read an Excel file from a batch. However, with threading, the process runs in the background, allowing you to simultaneously carry out other AX activities – you can read Excel data and perform business logic in the background. Please note that since ...

For those of you following my blog series based off some of my favorite movies the title won’t come as a surprise. I am really hoping that by combining my experiences from the user perspective with the best film plots that it will be informative and entertaining. This month I wanted to circle back with you and give you an update on how our implementation has been going. We went live in April of this year in D365 from an outside legacy system and a handful of other small software programs. We kicked off our restart in January of 2018 and forced ourselves to go live on a compressed timeline of 12 weeks. For the record--I don’t recommend this to anyone! ...

In a previous post , I talked about how I created a tool to help generate D365FO AOT security files from the user interface security output. Now I wanted to show how you would use this tool to actually take changes made in the user interface and move them to your AOT.
1. Export user interface security changes from D365FO
Go to System Administration -> Security Configuration -> Data tab -> Export
This will export an XML file with all security customizations that have been done in the user interface.
2. Download the D365FO Security Converter
When you launch it the input file will be the exported file from the user interface. ...

In a couple of previous posts ( Setting Up Security in D365FO – User Interface and Setting Up Security in D365FO – AOT ) I described how the actual security elements are stored differently in D365FO depending on where creation/modification is done at. If a security element is created/modified in the AOT, it is stored as code in the context of whatever project you are currently in. If, on the other hand, you are in the user interface security gets stored as data in the database in what Microsoft calls the ‘security delta’. When the security framework looks to determine what a role has access to, it first goes to the AOT and then looks in the security delta ...

Hello all AX 2009 and 2012 users,
Check out these AX 2009 and AX 2012 opportunities that await you at Summit 2018 in Phoenix! AXUG is committed to serving all users, whether you are using AX 2009, AX 2012, or D365FO. The session agenda is available at www.axugsummit.com , and contains over 90 sessions that address AX 2009 and AX 2012 functionality, and/or technical administration and project management!
Find the right sessions for your role now:
Administrators and IT professionals
Education abounds for those AX professionals who perform installation, ongoing maintenance and configuration tasks. If this is you, and you are responsible ...

User Group Summit Phoenix is extremely excited to announce our keynote speaker , James Phillips!
James Phillips is a Microsoft corporate vice president and leader of the company’s Business Applications Group – a product development organization with over 5,000 team members spanning the globe.
His teams build and operate Microsoft’s business applications and services; and the application, integration and intelligence platforms beneath them – collectively powering the digital transformation initiatives of some of the world’s largest organizations. His product portfolio includes the Dynamics 365 family, the Power Platform (Power BI, PowerApps, Flow) and Microsoft’s ...

AXUG Summit Phoenix schedule’s heating up! Our planning committee has curated what is promised to be the best content yet for legacy users and those thinking of the future. With over 90 sessions that are solely focused on AX 2009 and AX 2012 functionality, technical administration and project management, Summit Phoenix is the most impactful investment for you and your organization.
Here’s a sample of what’s offered just for your role:
Administrators and IT professionals
Education abounds for AX professionals who perform installation, ongoing maintenance and configuration tasks. If this is you, and you are responsible for ensuring your systems operate ...

What do you mean, Back to School ?
With August in sight, back to school is on everyone’s mind. Feel like you’re missing out? Have no fear – new Academy courses are here! The Academy team has been working hard to add additional and NEW courses to the 2018 schedule. With all the upcoming training opportunities, you can be certain you won’t feel out of the loop on the back to school vibe.
So what exactly is Academy?
Academy offers a variety of virtual – that is, online – classes that provide training on different business applications that people like yourself use every day. How does it work? You choose a class and time that works in your schedule, ...

By the end of 2018, business are estimated to spend nearly $1.3 trillion on digital transformation technologies.
The more ambitious organisations will know that transitioning can help them become faster and smarter in day-to-day operations as well as decision making and delivery. Companies that fail to modernise risk falling behind their market competitors. Overcoming the challenges associated with implementing an IT modernisation strategy is a vital first step.
Download: Secure your future with

Hi, In this post, we will discuss the process of dropping the published entity i.e. staging table gets deleted from the target Azure database. For demo purpose, I have selected vendor groups entity. Step 1: Navigate to the entity publish page(Path: Data Management workspace > Configure entity export to database tile > Publish button) and select Vendor groups entity. Step 2: Click on Drop Entity option on the action pane and a message appears stating "Drop job has been scheduled".Close the message. Step 3: Refresh the page and mark the checkbox "Show published only" to see that the vendor groups entity disappeared from the published ...

Hi,
In my previous post, I demoed the process of exporting the data through full push mode and incremental push mode using BYOD from D365FO. In this post, will demonstrate the export of data with the help of advanced feature namely Change Tracking. Change Tracking is a feature helps us to push only the modified data from the tables that are part of the chosen entity. We have three options to utilize this feature namely Enable Primary table, Enable Entire entity and Enable custom query and here I will export the data from vendor group entity using the first option. Step 1: Traverse to the entity publish page(Path: Data management workspace > Configure ...

Hi, In my previous post, I explained about the data entity publishing to the target Azure database. In this post, I will explain about exporting the data from D365FO. For demo purpose, I considered vendor groups entity. Step 1: Before proceeding further we need to confirm whether the intended entity is published or not. In my case vendor groups entity is published. Also, we need to check the record count and before export to have a picture of data in D365FO.In my case, there are 5 vendor groups. Step 2: Navigate to the Data management workspace, click on the export tile and create a new data project by selecting the Target data format as ExportDB. ...